


Crossworld Puzzle

by waltztangocache



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Learning to read, M/M, Repression, Season: Bluff City, Secret Samol, spoilers for all of bluff city season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22294330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltztangocache/pseuds/waltztangocache
Summary: "The first night Finnegan Hands spent in Blough City, as he would learn to call it, he slept at a bus stop."Finnegan ends up somewhere unfamiliar, and a familiar face helps him get on his feet.
Relationships: Achilles Apollo/Finnegan Hands
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Secret Samol 2019





	Crossworld Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arpad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arpad/gifts).



> Happy Secret Samol! Thank you so much to Arp for four amazing prompts, I loved all of them but the idea of these two together was too fun for me not to write it lol, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Sorry about the world's silliest title, I couldn't help myself.

The first night Finnegan Hands spent in Blough City, as he would learn to call it, he slept at a bus stop.

He didn’t even really know how he got there. The submarine had been torturous, nightmarish, a real lousy place to spend what had to have been at least two days, and he had very much appreciated not being inside it, but that was just the thing. There was a blurry spot somewhere in there, and then he was here, walking the streets no sub in sight. Just as well, he supposed. Not like he was getting back inside that thing, absolutely not, and not like he would have enough gas to get home if he did.

The place where he had ended up was, well, it wasn’t home, that was for sure. Finnegan had always found Bluff City’s tightness comforting, like the buildings were all, you know, giving him a hug, or something. He hadn’t had anywhere else to go, Lord knows, but even if he had, he would have stayed. Finn just liked Bluff City. Even the name. “Bluff City,” Finn said, the words slipping out with the force of his thought. A woman leaning against a building looked at him strangely, and Finnegan rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

Nope, he did not like this place at all, not one bit. Too sprawling, the sky too cloudless, the streets too filled with people who probably weren’t actually staring at him. A man in a santa costume walked by ringing a bell even though it was July. The skyline hurt his head to look at, and so did the advertisements, and so did the menu of the cafe where he popped into to splash water on his face. Finnegan was not a fan. 

The bus station had, really, been attempt number one at getting back to Bluff. It stood to reason that, as difficult as the bus maps were to read when the letters wouldn’t stop moving, damnit, one of the lines had to go out of the city, or at least he could ride around to get out of the heat and get a better grasp on the geography of wherever-the-hell-this-was. So he sat down on the bench, the metal warm through his pantlegs, and waited.

The first bus that passed didn’t worry him too much. Finnegan’s dive shop had once received a Yelp review that described him as, “inobtrusive,” and bus drivers had a very stressful job as far as Finn was concerned, so oh well. By the time the fourth bus in a row had cruised by without even stopping Finnegan was attempting to school his panic. It was fine. Probably. It was probably fine. Worst case scenario, surely Doyle would call the police when he didn’t turn up to work, and even if he didn’t know how to get back they surely did, and they would find him and everything would be fine, probably. 

The sun had started to set by the time bus number six went by and was fully down by bus nine, and there in the dark Finnegan was barely aware of the time passing. He only realized he’d fallen asleep in hindsight when he realized that, when a bus finally stopped, he had not seen it arrive. He would have scrambled up and onto it if he wasn’t so stunned by the person who stepped off. “M-Mr. Apollo?”

Achilles Apollo was a brick wall of a man in a sharp suit. Finnegan would doubt it was actually him (plenty of brick walls in sharps suits in the world) if not for the gauze sticking to his cheek and covering his right eye socket. He knit his brows together at the sight of Finnegan, then sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Christ alive.”

“What are you doing he- hey, wait, where are you going? Apollo!”

Apollo turned on his heels to face Finnegan. “If you’re gonna come with me, come with me, but shut your mouth.” Then he turned again and continued walking quickly toward a (very beautiful) car. He pulled a ring of keys out of his jacket pocket and got into the driver’s seat, and Finn quickly got into the passenger’s seat before he could be left to his bus-waiting.

“Why were you on that bus if you had a car?”

Apollo let out a beleaguered sigh and tapped his scarred fingers against the steering wheel. “Is that really the question you want to ask? Is that the most crucial thing at this second?”

“Oh. N-no, I guess it isn’t. Plenty of people have c-cars… and Lord knows this place seems hard to get to!” Finnegan had intended that to be a joke, but Apollo just gently hummed and tapped the wheel again. Part of Finn had been anticipating less terseness outside of a boxing context, and part of him was disappointed by the idea that he was just, well, like that. He cleared his throat and started again. “Where are we?”

Apollo glanced over at him (way over, to see him with his good eye) and said, “Blough City.” Then he fell silent again, like this answered everything.

Finnegan tried again. “And what is that?”

“A real shithole is what it is. A real shithole.” Apollo ran his tongue over his teeth and drummed his fingers again before he continued. “Every coin has two sides. Bluff is one. This place is the other. Everything Bluff City isn’t, this place is.”

“I thought you hated Bluff City? You’d, uh, ‘been there too long already’, if I remember.”

He hummed again. “My… employer is from these parts. Appearances need to be kept up. Lots of things I don’t like about Bluff City, but when you live a life on one side of a coin, well. It can be hard to adjust to the other.” After a moment Apollo huffed. “Not that you heard that from me.”

Finnegan’s brows knit together as he said, “I thought you guys were from Trenton?” At this Apollo fell into laughter. A nice laugh, Finn thought, as much as he resented that response to what he thought was a very reasonable question. “What? What’s so funny?”

Another full-head-turn glance. “No such thing.”

Hold on. What? “What?”

“Two sides of a coin, remember?” Apparently his silence conveyed how much sense that made, and Apollo sighed loud. “Bluff and Blough are two sides of a coin and there is nothing else.”

Finnegan turned away from Apollo. “Huh.” For a moment he stared at the road ahead of them. Then he leaned his head back against the leather of the headrest and covered his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“How is that - How is that possible!!! What about - What about the Trenton Zoo? Or, or, or, or Hilda Quick, P-Paternoster! She’s from LONDON, GODDAMNIT!!! How is that-”

While Finnegan was shouting, Apollo parked the car next to a little garage and turned abruptly to look at him. “I don’t know, okay! I have no fucking clue how it works but it’s true. There’s no Trenton, no London, no Zimbab-fucking-way, there’s just this place and that place, and now as far as you’re concerned, mister boxer manager, this place is all there is.”

Finn stared at Apollo, then rubbed his hand over his face. “I have to get home.”

“You don’t understand, asshole, there is no way home.”

Finn looked back at Apollo in horror. “Wha-”

“There is no way back to Bluff City.” Apollo was red-faced, anger and sadness seemingly blowing him up to twice his already large size. “I mean, fuck, clearly there is, but not without working with some scary-ass people and being dragged back here after. You’re stuck here. Welcome to your new goddamned home.”

“B-But I have a life, m-my shop, I-”

“I had a life too. Now my life is here. Doyle fucking McKeigh will have to find a new manager.”

Finnegan blushed. “Oh. I’m not actually- I run a dive shop.”

Apollo narrowed his eyes. “Like a bar?”

“No, like diving. Submarines.” Finn rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “That’s how I got here, actually.”

Finnegan yelped when Apollo clapped a hand onto his shoulder. “You are so damn lucky I found you.”

“Y-Yeah, I guess I am.”

Apollo smiled for a second, then drew back and got out of the car. Finnegan scrambled after him to a small yellowish house barely differentiable from those to either side of it. Apollo looked at him as he went to unlock the door. He looked a little sheepish as he said, “Remind me what your name is? I should have asked already, but I was too busy yelling at you.”

“Oh. H-Hands. Finnegan Hands.”

“Good to meet you, Hands. Achilles Apollo. You seemed to remember that, though.” Finn must have blushed even redder than he thought, because when he held the door open to let him in Apollo laughed. “No worries, man, I’ve been told I’m pretty memorable.”

Apollo’s house was clean and sparsely furnished. He pointed at a silicone mat by the door as he hung his suit jacket in the closet. “You can leave your shoes up here.” Then he headed further into the building, calling back to Finnegan. “I have some contacts in this place, out-of-towners like you, they can help you find a place of your own. A job, too. People might pay a little too much attention if you’re staying here too long, but it’s good enough for tonight. If anyone asks, you’re my cousin. Do you want a water? Sorry, that’s all I really drink. ...Hands?”

Finnegan started back to himself. “Sorry, it’s… all a lot.” He shook his head. “Water would be great, though. If you’re offering.”

Finnegan spent most of the rest of that day sat awkwardly on Apollo’s couch. The other man went into another room, and Finn could hear him speaking on the phone through the walls. When he came back in, dressed now in nice dark wash jeans and a plain white t-shirt, he sat himself in the armchair on the other side of the room and picked up a magazine. Eventually Finn turned on Apollo’s TV, a news broadcast starting to play. The headline at the bottom of the screen made him knit his brows up. “Apollo… why do the words here swirl around like that? I can’t tell what they say.”

Apollo didn’t look up from his magazine, which was also, frustratingly, covered in swirling letters. “Why is hard. All I know is you spend enough time here, they start to make sense.”

“It’s annoying as hell.”

“You said it.” After a second, Apollo set down his magazine upside down on the couch next to him and looked up intensely. “Most important thing you have to know here, though, is not to call attention to that kind of shit. Seriously. The more you stick out, the harder things are gonna be here for you. If something doesn’t make sense, you damn well better pretend it does. Keep your head down and blend in well as you can. Watch your mouth, too. Don’t know who’s listening.”

Finnegan stared at the wall for a second, turning this information over in his head. He turned back to Apollo and asked, “How am I supposed to work here, then? If I can’t read?”

Apollo grinned. “Plenty of opportunities if you know where to look. Don’t know if you’ll like them, necessarily, but they’ll suit your needs.” He picked up his magazine again. “Now watch the TV and stop trying to fight the letters, they’ll settle down eventually.”

Finnegan sighed, “And I don’t suppose a crossword puzzle would work any better?”

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it. Guess that can be your incentive to figure that shit out.”

Eventually day turned to night. Apollo brought out an extra set of sheets and a pillow, and Finn attempted to get comfortable on the couch which was definitely too small for his lanky body, but oh well, not like he was going to complain. For the second time in as many days Finnegan only realized he had fallen asleep when he was woken up, this time by the front door shutting.

Finn rose off the couch and walked to the front door. He peered out the window to see Apollo, sat on the front steps. When he pulled the door open Apollo spun, raising a gun off the concrete next to him only to lower it once he saw who was there. “Christ, Hands. Nearly gave me a heart attack.” He set the gun back onto the concrete and returned his attention to a cigarette. “Just having a smoke. Sit if you want, or go back in, I don’t care.”

Finnegan thought about it later, months later, and truly, he couldn’t say why he sat down. He was still tired, after all. But he did. The night was hot and quiet, all cicadas, and he was overly aware of the man next to him, his flannel pajama bottoms and his elbow resting on his knee. Probably, that was why he stayed, and why he took the cigarette Apollo offered him - no matter how much older he had gotten, Finnegan was still weak for a man who would show him a little kindness.

After a while, Apollo spoke. “Listen, Hands. Be careful in this place. Watch yourself. You seem like…” Apollo gestured, cigarette in hand, searching for the words. “...like a nice man. This place doesn’t do so good with nice. Chews it up and spits it out. It’s done it before and it’ll do it again, and I don’t want to watch it happen.”

“Well, I mean… I’ve fended for myself for a long time. And for others. One of my proteges was in the mafia.”

Apollo looked at him, raised the eyebrow above his good eye. “Sonny Veranda, right? That doesn’t reflect too well on you, Hands.”

“I-I-,” Finnegan stuttered, “I truly believe that it, uh, would have been worse. Without me.”

Apollo huffed a laugh, a frustratingly appealing noise, and nodded. “You’re probably right. Man’s a real mess. Smart move would have been to steer clear of that whole family. Point is, this place is some real shit. You had the misfortune to end up here, and now you gotta make the most of it. Be careful, keep your guard up, stay away from the wrong people, and you can live a good life here, I’m sure of it.” He ashed the cigarette on the pavement and stood up. “Back to bed for me. Bring that,” he said, pointing at the pistol still lying on the step, “back in when you’re done.”

Then Finnegan was alone, just him, the insects, and the smoke on his breath fading into this new city.

The house was tiny and old. Apollo had seemed almost embarrassed by it, that day when he first brought Finnegan there. He didn’t have a reason to be, really, it was only a few blocks from the Santa Deployment Building and had a shower and a stove and a futon and thus was perfectly sufficient. Finnegan hated it, immediately and intensely. He hated everything that reminded him that he was not in Bluff City, no matter how benign the thing in question was. 

Apollo himself was the exception. No matter how much he resented the situation, Finnegan could not bring himself to dislike having a handsome man check on him.

He didn’t come by often, once a month, maybe. When he did he would order food from somewhere other than the one delivery place up the road whose menu he had translated for Finnegan when he had first moved in. They would eat and after they ate Apollo would read and Finnegan would very determinedly not look at Apollo’s hands. It was nice. Easy, somehow. 

He had been right about finding a job too, for what it’s worth. RIght in that there were options, and right in that he didn’t enjoy them. Finnegan sweated through his Santa jacket day after day, rang a bell until his wrist was sore or listened to blandly dressed children ask for dolls and building blocks until he heard them in his dreams, and every day he went home exhausted. It paid though, enough for his cheap rent and groceries and takeout.

And so Finnegan Hands spent… an indeterminate amount of time. Hard to say when the weather didn’t change and the city was in full christmas mode year round. When Finn looked back the days drifted together until he really couldn’t tell how much time had passed between Apollo’s visits, or between his arrival here and the present. It had been long enough that his hair grew out more than he had ever let it back home, curling around his ears. Doyle had always told him he should try growing it out a little further. Finn wondered what he would think of it.

On the days he had off Finnegan took to trying to figure out how to get home. It was challenging to say the least. Research was nearly impossible. Finnegan tried not to fight the letters, and also not to be frustrated with even though that advice made absolutely no sense. But even if he had more reading success, this didn’t seem like the kind of thing he could learn about at the local library. 

Instead, Finnegan took to wandering the streets like he did the day he arrived in Blough City, looking for a way home. He started small at first, just the couple blocks near where he lived, peering into alleyways and taking mental notes of suspicious places or people who didn’t seem to belong. When he got back home (to his house, that is) he would transfer his findings onto the map he kept rolled up under his futon. The map expanded, block by block, until it covered his whole coffee table, and Finnegan felt no closer to finding anything. 

On the other side of every block there was another block, more apartment buildings and little houses and parking spaces. One night Finnegan made it to a hill. The next day he came back and looked out, hoping to see how much of his neighborhood he hadn’t yet explored, and while he could tell that the city changed he could never see where it happened. Every city block he looked at looked the same, on and out forever.

“Do you think I’ll ever get home? Really?” The words came tumbling out of Finnegan’s mouth, and Apollo gave him a strange look in return, surprised and sad and suddenly anxious. They were in Finnegan’s living room, across from each other at the table Finn had gotten secondhand.

Apollo searched for the right words, eventually settling on, “Not in the way you want.”

“Well, how about in any way?”

This set Apollo’s mouth into a hard line. “That’s not what I want. This place isn’t safe, and gets a whole lot less safe like that. And at the day’s end you’re right back here.”

Finnegan’s heart sank. “So that’s it, then?”

“Wish I had a different answer to give you.”

Finnegan sighed. “It’s… It’s not your fault. We’re in the same boat.”

Apollo huffed a laugh and raised his water glass in cheers. Finnegan felt himself smile and raised his own glass.

So, Finnegan shifted his priorities. He hated Blough City, but that didn’t mean he had to suffer living there. He bought a run down record player at the same secondhand store where he bought his table. He tried to cook rather than order in every night. He tried to get into drawing, then knitting when that didn’t stick, and once Apollo had walked in on him attempting to sculpt a figure out of clay. Written words started cooperating too, once Finnegan stopped trying to force them to make sense when he looked at them. His joy at being able to do crosswords almost made up for his frustration at Apollo’s advice having been accurate to what he needed to do.

One day, Finn had been walking home from work when he stopped in to get some groceries at the helpfully named “GROCERY STORE”. As he had been debating between two different brands of pasta sauce, he glanced over to see the cashier speaking quietly to someone who looked like-

“Agent Darcy???”

Maggie Darcy stiffened. She said something else to the cashier, then spun around, dragging Finnegan further into the store. “Don’t call me that.”

“Wha-”

“And keep your voice down.” They stopped in an empty aisle, and Agent Darcy turned to the shelf and began to study the packaging on a box of granola bars.

Finnegan’s mind was racing. “H-how-why are you-”

“I’m an agent,” Agent Darcy said, her eyes not moving an inch towards Finn. “And before you ask, no, not of the IRS. I only do that… I don’t do that here. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mr. Hands, but I was hoping I wouldn’t find you here. I was told you disappeared, took one of the subs with you, I was hoping…” Her jaw tightened, and Finn was suddenly aware of how much older she had gotten. Had it been that long? “Doesn’t matter what I was hoping. Are you safe here? Safe as you can be?”

“Safe as I can be, I guess. Apollo’s been helping.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Apollo as in Achilles Apollo? Didn’t realize you two knew each other.” Darcy grimaced and added, “Besides all that bullshit way back when.”

“Agent D-”

“Seals. Agent Seals.”

“Agent Seals, you have to take me back with you, you have to get me out. I hate it here.”

Darcy met Finnegan’s eyes. She looked guilty. “I can’t. Not without an explanation as to why or a way to make you useful. You don’t want that. This place is something, but back home is… different than it was when you left. Really, it is. A lot has changed, the game is different. Believe me or don’t, but you’re better off not getting involved.” Then she looked back at the granola bars. “I’m gonna buy these now, and then I’m going to leave. Wait a couple minutes, buy your groceries, and go home.”

Suddenly Finn felt very, very stupid. “Of course. H-have a nice day, Agent. Enjoy your granola bars. I, ah, wouldn’t have pegged you for a chocolate chunk type!”

Finn had been going for a laugh, but Agent Darcy just squinted down at the box. “Is that what these are?”

“Er- Yes? Why do yo-”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “I can’t read, Finnegan.”

Once Finnegan wrapped his head around reading (an idea that made him laugh at how strange his life had gotten), he invested in a wall calendar. Well, a series of wall calendars. Because of them he knew that he passed away exactly four years, three months, and 18 days between seeing Maggie Darcy at the grocery store and getting the call.

A large part of Finnegan wished he had never picked up the habit. It was, in a way, much harder to deal with knowing the exact length of time he had been stuck in this god awful place than it had been to just let the days drift away without notice. One he got in the habit, though, he couldn’t kick it.

So, four years and change, plus a while before he started counting, two years if he had to guess but maybe a little more. Six and a half years of Santa costumes and crossword puzzles and waiting to see Achilles again, and then-

“He’s getting out?” Finnegan had barely felt real all day, floating through his shift and back home, the strangeness of the parade making Blough City seem like some weird dream he would wake up and forget. Suddenly he felt painfully awake.

The woman on the line stuttered. “I- uh-”

“When’s he getting out?”

“Oh, um… I’m still working out the details, but it would be… soon. By the end of the week.”

“Oh. You’ve gotta get me out of here,” Finnegan said, steeling himself for another rejection.

“Of course.”

Nevermind, Finnegan was back to floating. “Of course?!”

The last night Finnegan Hands spent in Blough City, he didn’t sleep.

He and Apollo had ordered food like they had done so many times. They sat in Finnegan’s living room for a long time after they ate, neither one seeming willing to get up

Finnegan leaned back against the sofa. “I should get to bed, but I really don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep.”

Apollo nodded. “I know the feeling. Nothing’ll ruin your night more than knowing you’ll be crossing between dimensions the next day.” 

Finnegan ran a hand over his face, sighing. “I can’t believe it’s happening.” Apollo hummed next to him and Finn chuckled. “I’m really glad I picked up that call.”

“I’m sure. It’d stink to miss your chance like that and not even know.”

“It’s not just that. It would be,” Finnegan said, blushing, “so much worse to be here after you left. To be here without you.”

“Oh.” Finnegan looked over to see Apollo looking down at his lap, eye wide and mouth open.

Finnegan blushed harder. “Forget it,” he said, standing up and moving to put their dishes away.

“Hands, wait!” Finnegan turned around to see Apollo standing by the couch. Apollo took a step towards him. “I’m really glad you’re getting out. Because I want you to be safe, but also just... because I care about you.”

“Well, I appreciate you saying that.”

“Goddamnit, you’re not hearing me.” Apollo took a step forward, then another, and then he was standing very close. When he spoke again, it was quiet. “I care about you, Hands. Finnegan. More than I should. Way more. Okay? And I’d really like to kiss you, if that’s alright.”

“...Oh. O-okay, let me-” Finnegan turned around and set the dishes on the counter behind him. When he turned back, Apollo was smiling at him. “What?”

Apollo smiled wider. “Nothing.” And then he leaned in and pressed his lips against Finnegan’s.

It was short, barely anything, and when Apollo leaned back Finnegan felt entirely wrecked. “Wow.”

Apollo laughed, “That good, huh?”

“...No.” Finnegan thought that if he has been outside he would have glowed so red they could have seen him from space. “It’s just… been a while.”

“I’m aware,” Apollo said, and Finnegan groaned. “Once we get back… let me take you out to dinner. Somewhere that’s not your living room.”

Then something dawned on Finnegan. “I don’t… know that I have somewhere to stay back home. I mean, who knows what condition the shop is in, it’s been, what, six and a half years?”

“Closer to seven, really. But…” Finnegan watched Apollo steal himself. “Time passes different here compared to there. Seven here there is more like… twenty.”

“Wh-” Finnegan ran a hand across his face. “Twenty years? That’s… a lot.”

“I know. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I… didn’t think it would matter.” Apollo gently touched Finn’s chin, moving his face to make eye contact. “We’ll figure it out. Okay? I’ll help you.”

Finnegan squared his shoulders and took a calming breath. “Yeah. I know you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...And then they lived happily ever after probably.
> 
> If you have thoughts about Bluff City (including about how little sense its timeline makes oh my lord) feel free to hit me up @waltztangocache on twitter or @fourteenfifteen on tumblr.


End file.
